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  • General Editors: Ernest Q. Campbell

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14 results in American Sociological Association Rose Monographs

We Shall Live Again
  • The 1870 and 1890 Ghost Dance Movements as Demographic Revitalization
  • Russell Thornton
  • Published online:
    04 August 2010
    Print publication:
    26 September 1986
  • This study of the 1870 and 1890 Ghost Dance movements among North American Indians offers an innovative theory about why these movements arose when they did. Emphasizing the demographic situation of American Indians prior to the movements, Professor Thornton argues that the Ghost Dances were deliberate efforts to accomplish a demographic revitalization of American Indians following their virtual collapse. By joining the movements, he contends, tribes sought to assure survival by increasing their numbers through returning the dead to life. Thornton supports this thesis empirically by closely examining the historical context of the two movements and by assessing tribal participation in them, revealing particularly how population size and decline influenced participation among and within American Indian tribes. He also considers American Indian population change after the Ghost Dance periods and shows that participation in the movements actually did lead the way to a demographic recovery for certain tribes.

The Shape of Culture
  • A Study of Contemporary Cultural Patterns in the United States
  • Judith R. Blau
  • Published online:
    06 July 2010
    Print publication:
    24 November 1989
  • This book systematically examines prevailing cultural patterns in contemporary American society. Using information on several thousands of cultural organisations, including elite ones (such as opera and chamber music companies) and popular cultural ones (such as cinemas and live rock concerts), Professor Blau examines the geography of culture, the changing demands for culture, the interdependencies among cultural organisations of different kinds, the nature of labour markets for artists, and the effects of arts subsidies on nonprofit cultural establishments over a ten year period. One of the major conclusions of the book is that the social conditions that support elite and popular culture are increasingly similar over time.

Trafficking in Drug Users
  • Professional Exchange Networks in the Control of Deviance
  • James Ralph Beniger
  • Published online:
    07 May 2010
    Print publication:
    24 February 1984
  • Control of illegal drug use and abuse requires an elaborate network of organizations and professions: medical, legal, political, educational, and welfare. This book, first published in 1984, explores the way in which these diverse sectors coordinate the control of deviance in a complex society and how they respond to a sudden widespread increase in deviance spanning many institutional and professional domains. The latter of these concerns, James Beniger argues, affords us a unique insight into the more general question of societal control. He takes as an example of this phenomenon the dramatic appearance of the 'drug problem' in America in the Vietnam war era of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Exploiting this as an approximation of an experimentally induced disruption of society, Professor Beniger examines its impact on the interorganizational and professional networks that together constitute a system for the control of a social deviance.

Society and Identity
  • Toward a Sociological Psychology
  • Andrew J. Weigert, J. Smith Teitge, Dennis W. Teitge
  • Published online:
    05 May 2010
    Print publication:
    31 March 1986
  • Since the 1940s, there has been an explosion of writings, both scientific and nonscientific, about the question of 'identity' and what it means to be an individual in today's world. This book examines sociological perspectives on identity in order to illuminate the perennial problem of defining the human person, and to pose an alternative definition of identity based on it being socially constructed. Beginning with a review of previous studies of identity, the authors present a set of propositions for organizing the wide range of uses of the term, and for arriving at an adequate definition of it. Identity is then analysed in two contexts: gender identity, linked to present bodies; and prenatal and postmortem identities, linked to future and past bodies. Whereas gender identity reveals the powerful but breakable link between body type and identity, prenatal and postmortem identities illustrate the symbolic reality and partial independence of identity from any corporeal existence. This is an innovative and insightful study which will appeal to all those concerned with understanding the nature of human identity.

Age, Class, Politics, and the Welfare State
  • Fred C. Pampel, John B. Williamson
  • Published online:
    30 April 2010
    Print publication:
    25 August 1989
  • This analysis of the growth of welfare spending examines the relative impact of class and status groups versus demographic composition and political structures. Special attention is given to the role of the aged as representative of the importance of ascription and middle-class groups in welfare growth, and to the effect of welfare spending on income inequality. Aggregate cross-national data from the UN, ILO, and the World Bank are analysed and the conclusion is drawn that a large aged population, especially in combination with democratic political processes, is a direct and crucial influence on the level of welfare spending.

Dynamic Functionalism
  • Strategy and Tactics
  • Michael A. Faia
  • Published online:
    20 January 2010
    Print publication:
    26 September 1986
  • Over the last several decades, functional theory in the social sciences has fallen into disfavour. Alleged to be a static form of theory incapable of explaining social change, methodologically impotent and ideologically tainted, functionalism stands accused of being socially and politically reactionary. In this book, Michael Faia challenges the view that functionalism should be rejected. He claims that because functional theories are causal, multivariate, time-ordered, and characterized by reciprocal causation, they are in fact inherently dynamic, demand the highest methodological rigour, and also force sociology to transcend its infamous 'paradigm disputes' by recognizing that the social sciences have already achieved an 'integrated methodological paradigm'. The central arguments of the book are illustrated by a wide variety of examples drawn from several academic disciplines. These range from the incest taboo to witchcraft, from tenure in the US Congress to duration of marriage. The reader thus gains a strong appreciation of the wide applicability of the functionalist mode of explanation.

Theory of Societal Constitutionalism
  • Foundations of a Non-Marxist Critical Theory
  • David Sciulli
  • Published online:
    19 January 2010
    Print publication:
    29 November 1991
  • Sciulli argues that the existing conceptual frameworks of political and social theory restrict both theorists and empirical researchers to a narrow definition of authoritarianism. This 1992 book focuses on government structure and fails to take account of forms of social control exercised outside the governmental sphere. Rather than define authoritarianism primarily by contrast to liberal democracy, Sciulli argues, we need to broaden our conception of authoritarianism to include 'social authoritarianism', referring to social control imposed by private organizations and institutions. Sciulli develops an alternative conceptual framework, which he calls the theory of societal constitutionalism. He explains how the theory can be used to assess whether social order in a society, whether democratic or authoritarian in political rule, is characterized by some degree of social authoritarianism. The book will be important reading for theorists in sociology, political science and legal studies.

The Field of Social Investment
  • Severyn T. Bruyn
  • Published online:
    19 January 2010
    Print publication:
    23 July 1987
  • This book is concerned with the theory and practice of social investment as a profession. It offers a conceptual foundation for investment policy and research, and reviews empirical studies supporting new directions in investment policies. It also provides guidelines for trustees, based on the best available knowledge of corporate behaviour, and presents researchers with key hypotheses to follow in gathering data for the evaluation of social investment norms. A unique study, it provides the basis for defining social investment as a field of knowledge.

The Methodology of Herbert Blumer
  • Kenneth Baugh, Jr
  • Published online:
    15 December 2009
    Print publication:
    29 June 1990
  • The Methodology of Herbert Blumer is a comprehensive critical account of the contributions of this important American sociologist to the methodology of social research. In a close reading of Blumer's texts, the author charts the development of Blumer's thinking, revealing a tension between a reductive empiricism and an emphasis on the importance of theory in social research. The author describes Blumer's conception of methodology as extending beyond narrow questions of technique to encompass broad critical reflection on the principles underlying scientific inquiry. Blumer's concentration on the integral unity of theory and method relates suggestively to current thinking about methodology, while his examinations of this theme in such areas as public opinion research and variable analysis provide provocative criticisms of some current research practices.

The Meaning of General Theoretical Sociology
  • Tradition and Formalization
  • Thomas J. Fararo
  • Published online:
    10 December 2009
    Print publication:
    24 November 1989
  • This book sets out a generative structuralist conception of general theoretical sociology; its philosophy, its problems, and its methods. The field is defined as a comprehensive research tradition with many intersecting subtraditions that share conceptual components. The focus is on formalization and unification as processes that can help advance the state of theory today. An integrative philosophy of the field is set out in terms of a process worldview, with a focus on generativity in explanation and a conception of the structure of theories as hierarchical meaning control systems. This philosophy is implemented in two phases. In the first phase, Professor Fararo defines the core problems of theoretical sociology in the context of setting out and illustrating the logic of a nonlinear dynamical social systems framework. A critical analysis of the outcome of this phase then leads, in the second phase, to formal treatments of action principles and structural analysis. A variety of traditions are drawn upon to treat theoretical problems of order and integration, as well as to examine searchingly problems of formalization and unification in theoritical sociology.

The Costs of Regime Survival
  • Racial Mobilization, Elite Domination and Control of the State in Guyana and Trinidad
  • Percy C. Hintzen
  • Published online:
    08 October 2009
    Print publication:
    29 September 1989
  • This comparative study of two republics - Guyana in South America, and Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean - examines the conditions which determine regime survival in less developed countries. Given the structure of political and economic organization typical of these countries, and of the web of international relations of which they are a part, political survival can very often depend on a leader's willingness to serve the interests of a small, but politically strategic minority. In both Guyana and Trinidad post-independence leaders made politically expedient decisions that foreclosed policy choices consistent with the satisfaction of collective needs. As a result both countries experienced a series of political and economic crises. This in-depth comparative study of Guyana and Trinidad will be of interest to all scholars, students and policy-makers concerned with aspects of political and economic development in the Third World.

Historical Role Analysis in the Study of Religious Change
  • Mass Educational Development in Norway, 1740–1891
  • John T. Flint
  • Published online:
    06 October 2009
    Print publication:
    22 March 1990
  • This 1990 study in historical sociology explores the relationship between educational development and religious change in Norwegian society during a period of significant social and economic transition. John Flint traces the processes whereby the laity radically reduced clerical control over religious institutions. He examines census materials, reports to the Ministries of the Church and Education, and information from organizational histories, using historical role analysis to describe the changing relationships among state church pastors, parish school teachers, pupils, parents, and lay preachers. In his examination of the movement toward mass literacy, John Flint draws on and contributes to the sociology of comparative education development. His findings from this Norwegian study have wider theoretical and methodological implications, and will be of interest to historians and sociologists studying religion and education.

Pathways in the Workplace
  • The Effects of Gender and Race on Access to Organizational Resources
  • Jon Miller
  • Published online:
    30 September 2009
    Print publication:
    31 March 1986
  • Rationalistic theories of the workplace and the claims typically made by organizations stress that an individual's access to the resources and advantages of an organization are determined by his or her qualifications and contributions to the collective enterprise, and that the payoffs for effort are essentially the same for all doing similar work. However, as Jon Miller shows in this book, negotiating for workplace rewards is actually far more complicated than this model allows, and he demonstrates that access to networks of organizational communication is in fact fundamentally influenced by race and gender. Comparing patterns of access to informal colleague networks and relations to the decision-making apparatus for white and non-white men and women in American public service organizations, he shows that only white males experienced a fairly close correspondence between their bureaucratic 'investments' and their workplace rewards.

Different Worlds
  • A Sociological Study of Taste, Choice and Success in Art
  • Liah Greenfeld
  • Published online:
    16 September 2009
    Print publication:
    26 January 1989
  • Using a wealth of data collected in Israel, this study depicts a complete system in which art is created and evaluated - the scale of Israeli society allowing for a comprehensive and detailed description of all the agents involved in the production and consumption of modern art. The author analyses the patterns of social relations and behaviour created around two art worlds - the world of abstract avant-garde art and the world of traditional figurative painting. She argues that the two worlds differ radically both in terms of the factors that affect the formation of taste, the process of evaluation and the patterns of success in them and in the ways in which these factors exert their influence.